


to make you feel my love

by spyglass



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 18:39:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6251119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spyglass/pseuds/spyglass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sneaking around is fun at first, but after a few months, Julian believes it's time to tell the pack about their relationship. To do so, he has a plan to woo Naya to his way of thinking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to make you feel my love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts).



i.

Sneaking around is fun at first.

Hiding their relationship from their packmates isn’t an easy task, but it’s the choice that makes sense. In the beginning, at least. Their relationship is still fresh and new, and placing it under the microscope of pack gossip, well-intentioned though it may be, is only asking for trouble.

But that was three months ago.

Julian has loved Naya since she was a little girl, from the moment he and Roman first started talking to her while she was in her mother’s womb, and that love has only grown over years of shared memories. Together with Roman, they played hide and seek and had picnics and tea parties. But they spent time just the two of them as well. Julian taught her how to make her first flower crown, and when he fell and scraped his knee, Naya made him special bandages and tried to fix it.

She’s always been special, to both Julian and his brother, but her relationship with Julian has always been _different_. By the time Naya was a teenager, she had become one of his closest confidants. They kept in close touch through the years she was away at school. Then she returned to DarkRiver after completing the last stage of her medical training, and the love that was always there morphed into something else entirely.

Now that they’ve been together for three months, the reasons for keeping their relationship to themselves are no longer relevant.

Julian considers how to broach the subject for several weeks before finally talking to her about it. It’s late at night, as she’s dressing to sneak back to her own cabin, when he finally brings it up.

“You should stay.”

Naya spins around, her eyebrow raised in question, and he almost falters, not wanting to push too hard when she’s concerned about establishing herself as the new pack healer, when she’s worried that the packmates who watched her grow up may not take her seriously. She’s wrong, of course, but he understands her fears all the same.

But he presses on, more confidant this time. “You should stay tonight, Naya.”

She considers him for a beat before slowly shaking her head. “You know I want to, but if I stay tonight, there’s a chance someone will see me sneaking back home in the morning. With my luck, it will be your brother… or _mine_.”

“I’m not worried about Roman,” he says with a chuckle. “I can take him. Now Alex on the other hand? I’ll leave him up to you if he starts teasing.”

“You know how he gets,” she teases affectionately, then sighs, her eyes filling with regret. “But I’m really sorry, I just don’t think it’s the right time yet.”

He’s suspected this would be her response, but her answer still stings. “I understand,” he says solemnly, and he’s trying to. He reaches out, rubbing a hand against her shoulder, trying to anchor their connection, to comfort them both as they try to figure out how to navigate this _together_. “But I love you, Naya, and as soon as you’re ready, I want everyone in DarkRiver to know it.”

“I love you too, Jules, and we _will_ tell everyone. Soon. I promise. It just isn’t the right time yet.”

With a quick kiss, she disappears out the door and into the night.

And a plan begins to take hold in Julian’s mind.

She may not be ready yet, but she will be, soon. And when she is, Julian will be ready.

 

ii.

As plans go, Julian thinks his is rather brilliant. Especially when he considers that for once, he didn’t have his brother’s assistance in the scheming behind it.

He plans a visit to the DarkRiver Healing Center about a week after his late night conversation with Naya, and when he arrives, he finds her deep in a discussion with his mother Tammy over a journal article on the an experimental new healing technique.

“Good morning,” he greets both women brightly, tearing their attention from their debate. “Mom, you seem to have forgotten part of your lunch at home this morning. I noticed it after you left and thought I’d bring it by for you.”

“I could have sworn I put my lunch in my work bag this morning.” His mother frowns, then quickly shrugs it off. Behind her, Julian can see Naya tilt her head and raise an eyebrow in suspicion. “I guess I must finally be getting up there with your father in years, Jules. Can you put it on the counter by those lovely flowers that were just delivered to Naya?”

“Flowers?” He inquires in his best nonchalant tone. “A secret admirer, Nadiya?”

He only ever calls her Nadiya when they’re in bed together. Behind his mother, her face flushes and she sticks out her tongue.

“I don’t know. There’s no card; the delivery boy just said that they were for me.”

He leaves his mother’s lunch beside the beautiful bouquet of roses he arranged for delivery, and he takes a few moments to admire the arrangement. Red roses mean love, respect, and passion, according to the florist he visited in San Francisco.

“Well, whoever he is, he must really like you,” his mother comments. “Roses like that only come from a man in love. You should bring him around sometime; I’m sure everyone would love to meet him.”

“We’ll see when that’s a possibility,” Naya answers, her tone as noncommittal as possible while she keeps her eyes firmly trained on him.

Julian grins at her. “Yes, I’d like to meet him.”

Naya rolls her eyes but grins back at him. Julian takes his leave, an added skip in his step as he goes.

 

iii.

He waits another week, biding his time for the perfect opening to make his next move.

It comes when a large group of their DarkRiver friends decide to meet some of the SnowDancers at a karaoke bar in San Francisco. Julian is running late, so when he gets to the bar, she’s already sitting with Elena Krychek and Selina Snow. There’s just enough room for him to pull up a chair beside her.

She smiles at him, a brief moment for just the two of them before they’re drawn into their friends’ lively chatter, and she reaches for his hand under the table.

With her hand in his, Julian is content to sit back and watch the group, chiming in every so often when a clear opening arises in the conversation. But mostly, he just wants to sit back and enjoy being here, with her, together with their friends.

It’s what he imagines their life will be like when she’s ready to tell the pack.

It takes about an hour before Declan Kincaid starts clamoring for someone to be the first to go up on stage and join in on karaoke. Usually this is where Roman or Selina would be the first to volunteer, but this time, Julian rises from his seat and volunteers to put his name down.

Naya frowns; she knows first hand that he is a terrible singer and doesn’t particularly like karaoke. What she doesn’t know is that tonight, he does not mind.

He selects a song he knows she loves; a human song that Sascha used to sing to Lucas when, according to her, he was being _particularly grumpy and alpha cat-like_. He has fond memories of helping Naya learn the song, just the two of them, so she could sing along with her mother.

_“I don’t like the way he’s looking at you. I’m starting to think you want him too. Am I crazy, have I lost ya? Even though I know you love me, can’t help it…”_

Sitting at the table, their friends begin to howl with laughter, but the one person who doesn’t laugh is the one person he doesn’t take his eyes off of until the song is over.

Their friends may not understand yet.

But Naya seems to be coming around.

 

iv.

Julian starts checking off the items on his list, one by one. He teaches Naya how to make his mother’s chocolate chip cookies; he takes her on picnics to spots where they used to play when they were children. They shift into their cat forms and go on long runs. And then finally, it’s time; there’s only one last item left on his list.

“I have something for you,” he says one night when they’re lying in bed together. Getting up to retrieve his shirt from the floor, he reaches into the front pocket where a small wrapped package waits.

She sits up herself as she accepts the gift, and she unwraps it slowly, cautiously separating the tape from the wrapping paper, until a small, beaded bracelet falls into her lap.

The bracelet resembles the necklace he and Roman gave her the day she was born, the necklace she now wears around her left wrist.

“Oh.” She exhales softly, her eyes wide with wonder and surprise.

“I thought you should have one that was just from me,” he says, sitting back down beside her on the bed. He extends his hand and takes the bracelet from her, placing it on her wrist beside its match. “Let me tell you what the beads mean.”

Naya nods, her eyes still transfixed on the bracelet.

“You know what these are.” He points to the white, black, and green beads grouped together. “And that gray one beside your parents is Alex.”

She laughs at this, remembering when Alex had been a toddler and first shifted. His coat had been a sleek gray, much to their father’s dismay; although it had darkened over time, now resembling a deep slate gray, his older sister - ever the scientist - liked to tease him about his recessive genes.

“And these,” he motions to a series of two blue beads and a brown bead streaked with blue, “are my parents and Roman, of course.”

“Of course,” she agrees, remembering the meaning of the identical beads on her first bracelet.

“But these are the most important.” Julian directed her attention to the series of beads in the center of the bracelet, a rainbow of beads perfectly arranged with a black and white bead bracketing them at either end. “They don’t mean anything on their own, but what I want them to represent is the whole life we’ll have together, when you’re ready to take that next step.”

He waits then, as he finishes, his heart beating rapidly in his chest. He’s taking a risk by telling her this, and now he can only hope she’s in the same place he is.

Naya gasps and leans forward almost involuntarily, her lips pressing against his with familiar ease. “I do want that, too,” she says, laughing, as her smile reaches her eyes. “And I think… I think I _am_ ready. I think maybe I’ve been ready for a little while now, and you’ve just helped me see it. So if you ask me to stay again tonight, I’ll stay.”

Julian doesn’t have to be told to ask twice.

 

v.

The next morning, they make their way to Naya’s parents home bright and early. The sun is still just rising in the sky, but Sascha loves mornings and will have been awake for hours. Naya is nervous; she’s never brought someone home to meet her parents before. Julian, for his part, is far less worried than he would be if her grandmother happened to be home.

Naya lets them in through the back door that leads directly into the kitchen, but it’s Lucas, not Sascha, who is there to greet them.

“Good morning, dad,” she greets her father, kissing his cheek. “Where’s mom?”

“I’m right here,” Sascha says, breezing into the kitchen. “Good morning, Naya. What brings you by this morning?”

Lucas narrows his eyes and Julian. “I think, darling, Naya and Julian have finally come to tell us they’ve been seeing each other.”

“Oh, good!” Sascha exclaims brightly, here dark cardinal eyes finally scanning the kitchen and smiling warmly at Julian. “It’s about time.”

Sensing Naya’s unease, Julian walks up behind her, wrapping one arm around her waist. “Wait,” she says in surprise. “You’ve known?”

“For months now,” Sascha replies, sending a mother-knows-all look that both Naya and Julian are all too familiar with. “We didn’t want to spoil your fun, so we thought we’d let it play out. This one here has been getting antsy though,” she motions to her mate and gives him an affectionate grin. “So I, for one, am glad you’ve decided it was time to tell us. Why don’t you two come in and have breakfast with us, and we can talk about it?”

Naya nods her head in silent agreement, and the four of them begin to walk into the dining room. They are seated at the table, breakfast spread out around then, when a question begins forming in the back of his mind, and Julian frowns.

“Did… everyone know,” he asks.

“Not everyone,” Sascha answers, grabbing a chocolate chip muffin for herself before passing the plate of pastries to her daughter, who inherited her sweet tooth. “But I think you’ll find that the number of people who didn’t know is far outnumbered by the number of people who _did_.”

Well.

The best laid plans, then.

But sitting at the table with Naya at his side, he reaches for her hand and thinks this plan worked out pretty well in the end.


End file.
